"Two Spirit" is not interchangeable with "LGBT Native American" or "Gay Indian";[2] this title differs from most western, mainstream definitions of sexuality and gender identity in that it is not so much about whom one sleeps with, or how one personally identitfies; rather, it is a sacred, spiritual and ceremonial role that is recognized and confirmed by the Elders of the Two Spirit's ceremonial community.[1][2] While some have found the term a useful tool for intertribal organizing, not all Native cultures conceptualize gender or sexuality this way, and most tribes use names in their own languages.[5][7] While pan-Indian terms are not always appropriate or welcome, the term has generally received more acceptance and use than the term it replaced.[5]

Among the goals of two spirit societies are group support; outreach, education, and activism; revival of their Indigenous cultural traditions, including preserving the old languages, skills and dances;[4] and otherwise working toward social change.[8]

'The elders will tell you the difference between a gay Indian and a Two-Spirit,' [Joey Criddle] said, underscoring the idea that simply being gay and Indian does not make someone a Two-Spirit.[2]

Unfortunately, depending on an oral tradition to impart our ways to future generations opened the floodgates for early non-Native explorers, missionaries, and anthropologists to write books describing Native peoples and therefore bolstering their own role as experts. These writings were and still are entrenched in the perspective of the authors who were and are mostly white men.[16]

Historically, the presence of male-bodied two-spirits "was a fundamental institution among most tribal peoples," according to Brian Gilley[17] and, according to non-Native anthropologist Will Roscoe, both male- and female-bodied two-spirits have been documented "in over 130 North American tribes, in every region of the continent."[18] However, Ojibwe journalist Mary Annette Pember argues that this depiction threatens to homogenizes diverse Indigenous cultures, painting over them with an overly broad brush, potentially disappearing, "distinct cultural and language differences that Native peoples hold crucial to their identity."[19]

According to German Anthropologist Sabine Lang, Cross dressing of two spirit people was not always an indicator of gender identity. Lang believes "the mere fact that a male wears women's clothing does not say something about his role behavior, his gender status, or even his choice of partner..."[20]

Male-bodied two spirit people, regardless of gender identification, can go to war and have access to male activities such as male-only sweat lodge ceremonies.[21] However, they may also take on "feminine" activities such as cooking and other domestic responsibilities.[22] According to Lang, female assigned at birth two-spirits usually have sexual relations or marriages with only females.[23]

The increasing visibility of the two spirit concept in mainstream culture has been seen as both empowering and as having some undesirable consequences, such as the spread of misinformation about the cultures of Indigenous people, pan-Indianism, and cultural appropriation of Indigenous identities and ceremonial ways among non-Natives who do not understand that two spirit is specifically a Native American and First Nations cultural identity, not to be taken up by non-Natives.[19][24]

These sort of simplified black-and-white depictions of Native culture and history perpetuate indiscriminate appropriation of Native peoples. Although the current new meme or legend surrounding the term two spirit is certainly laudable for helping LGBTQ people create their own more empowering terminology to describe themselves, it carries some questionable baggage.
My concern is not so much over the use of the words but over the social meme they have generated that has morphed into a cocktail of historical revisionism, wishful thinking, good intentions, and a soupçon of white, entitled appropriation.[19]

For First Nations two spirits whose lives have been impacted by the Residential Schools, and other Indigenous communities who have experienced severe cultural damage from colonization, the specific two spirit traditions in their communities may have been severely damaged, fragmented, or even lost.[24] In these cases there have been serious challenges to remembering and reviving their older traditional ways, and to overcoming the homophobia and other learned prejudices of forced assimilation.[24]

When Indigenous people from communities that are less-accepting of two spirits have sought community among non-Native LGBT communities, however, the tendency for non-Natives to tokenize and appropriate has at times led to rifts rather than unity, with two spirits feeling like they're just another tacked on initial rather than fully included.[24]

The term two-spirited was chosen to emphasize our difference in our experiences of multiple, interlocking oppressions as queer Aboriginal people. When non-Aboriginal people decide to "take up" the term two-spirit, it detracts from its original meaning and diffuses its power as a label of resistance for Aboriginal people. Already there is so much of First Nations culture that has been exploited and appropriated in this country; must our terms of resistance also be targeted for mainstream appropriation and consumption?
Two-spirited is a reclaimed term designed by Aboriginals to define our unique cultural context, histories, and legacy. When people do not see the harm in "sharing" the term, they are missing the point and refusing to recognize that by appropriating the term they will inevitably alter its cultural context.[24]

Most Indigenous communities have specific terms in their own languages for the gender-variant members of their communities and the social and spiritual roles these individuals fulfill; with over 500 surviving Native American cultures, attitudes about sex and gender can be very diverse. Even with the modern adoption of pan-Indian terms like Two Spirit, not all cultures will perceive Two Spirits the same way, or welcome a pan-Indian term to replace the terms already in use by their cultures.[19]

Lakota: Wíŋkte is the contraction of an old Lakota word, Winyanktehca, meaning "wants to be like a woman."[25]Winkte are a social category in historical Lakota culture, of male-bodied people who adopt the clothing, work, and mannerisms that Lakota culture usually consider feminine. In contemporary Lakota culture, the term is more commonly associated with simply being gay. Both historically and in modern culture, usually winkte are homosexual, though they may or may not consider themselves part of the more mainstream LGBT communities. Some winkte participate in the pan-Indian Two Spirit community.[25] While historical accounts of their status vary widely, most accounts see the winkte as regular members of the community, and not in any way marginalized for their status. Other accounts hold the winkte as sacred, occupying a liminal, third gender role in the culture and born to fulfill ceremonial roles that can not be filled by either men or women.[25] In contemporary Lakota communities, attitudes towards the winkte vary from acceptance to homophobic.[25]

Navajo: Nádleeh, in traditional Navajo culture, are male-bodied individuals described by those in their communities as "effeminate male," or as "half woman, half man".[1] A 2009 documentary about the tragic murder of nádleeh Fred Martinez, entitled, Two Spirits, contributed to awareness of these terms and cultures.[1]

Ojibwe: Ikwekanaazo, "Men who chose to function as women...One who endeavors to be like a woman."[26]

Ojibwe: Ininiikaazo, "Women who functioned as men...one who endeavors to be like a man."[26]

[In Ojibwe cultures] Sex usually determined one’s gender, and therefore one’s work, but the Ojibwe accepted variation. Men who chose to function as women were called ikwekaazo, meaning ‘one who endeavors to be like a woman. Women who functioned as men were called ininiikaazo, meaning, 'one who endeavors to be like a man.' The French called these people berdaches. Ikwekaazo and ininiikaazo could take spouses of their own sex. Their mates were not considered ikwekaazo or ininiikaazo, however, because their function in society was still in keeping with their sex. If widowed, the spouse of an ikwekaazo or ininiikaazo could remarry someone of the opposite sex or another ikwekaazo or ininiikaazo. The ikwekaazowag worked and dressed like women. The ininiikaazowag worked and dressed like men. Both were considered to be strong spiritually, and they were always honoured, especially during ceremonies.[26]

Before the late twentieth-century, non-Native (i.e. non-Native American/Canadian) anthropologists used the generic term berdache/bərˈdæʃ/ to identify an indigenous individual fulfilling one of many mixed gender roles in their tribe, but that term has now fallen out of favor. Anthropologists primarily used it to identify feminine Native men. Its etymology, however, has meant that it is now considered outdated and potentially offensive: it derives from the Frenchbardache (English equivalent: "bardash") meaning "passive homosexual", "catamite"[27] or even "male prostitute". Bardache, in turn, derived from the Persianبردهbarda meaning "captive", "prisoner of war", "slave".[28][29][30][31] Spanish explorers who encountered two spirits among the Chumash people called them "joyas", the Spanish for "jewels".[32]

Use of berdache has generally been replaced by the self-chosen two spirit, which, in 1990, gained widespread popularity during the third annual intertribal Native American/First Nations gay and lesbian conference in Winnipeg.[33] The decision to adopt this new, pan-Indian term was deliberate, with a clear intention to distance themselves from non-Native gays and lesbians,[34] as well as from non-Native terminology like berdache, "gay", "lesbian", and "trans".[6][34][35] Cameron writes, "The term two-spirit is thus an Aboriginal-specific term of resistance to colonization and non-transferable to other cultures. There are several underlying reasons for two spirited Aboriginals' desire to distance themselves from the mainstream queer community."[24] Lang explains that for Aboriginal people, their sexual orientation or gender identity is secondary to their ethnic identity. She states, "at the core of contemporary two-spirit identities is ethnicity, an awareness of being Native American as opposed to being white or being a member of any other ethnic group."[34]

Don Pedro Fages was third in command of the 1769–70 Spanish Portolà expedition, the first European land exploration of what is now the U.S. state of California. At least three diaries were kept during the expedition, but Fages wrote his account later, in 1775. Fages gave more descriptive details about the native Californians than any of the others, and he alone reported the presence of homosexuality in the native culture. The English translation reads:

I have submitted substantial evidence that those Indian men who, both here and farther inland, are observed in the dress, clothing and character of women - there being two or three such in each village - pass as sodomites by profession.... They are called joyas, and are held in great esteem.[36]

According to Lang, in most tribes a relationship between a two spirit and non-two-spirit has historically been seen for the most part as neither heterosexual nor homosexual (in modern-day terms) but more hetero-normative; early European colonists, however, saw such relationships as homosexual. Partners of two spirit have not historically viewed themselves as homosexual, and moreover drew a sharp conceptual line between themselves and two-spirits.[37]

Although two spirit have been both respected and feared in a number of tribes, the two spirit is not beyond being reproached or, by traditional law, even killed for bad deeds. In the Mojave tribe, for instance, two spirit frequently become medicine persons and, like all who deal with the supernatural, are at risk of suspicion of witchcraft, notable in cases of failed harvest or of death. There have been instances of murder in these cases the female-bodied two spirit named Sahaykwisā).[38] Another instance in the late 1840s was of a Crow male-bodied two spirit who was caught, possibly raiding horses, by the Lakota and was killed.[39]

Lang and Jacobs write that historically among the Apache, the Lipan, Chiricahua, Mescalero, and southern Dilzhe'e have alternative gender identities.[40][41] One tribe in particular, the Eyak, has a single report from 1938 that they did not have an alternative gender and they held such individuals in low esteem, although whether this sentiment is the result of acculturation or not is unknown.[42]

Among the Iroquois, there is a single report from Bacqueville de la Potherie in his book published in 1722, Histoire de l'Amérique septentrionale, that indicates that an alternative gender identity exists among them.[43]

Many, if not all, tribes have been influenced by European homophobia and misogyny.[44][45][46][47][48] Some sources have reported that the Aztecs and Incas had laws against such individuals,[49][50] though there are some authors who feel that this was exaggerated or the result of acculturation, because all of the documents indicating this are post-conquest and any that existed before had been destroyed by the Spanish.[47][51] The belief that these laws existed, at least for the Aztecs, comes from the Florentine Codex, and that evidence exists that indigenous peoples authored many codices, but the Spaniards destroyed most of them in their attempt to eradicate ancient beliefs.[52] Nowadays, some Zapotec natives from Mexico are born as males, but later cross dress as women and practice all activities associated to the female gender. Such people are known as Muxe.[53]

The 2009 documentary film[54]Two Spirits, directed by Lydia Nibley, tells the story of the hate-murder of 16-year-old Navajo Fred Martinez. In the film, Nibley "affirms Martinez' Navajo sense of being a two spirit 'effeminate male', or nádleeh."[1]:168 Martinez' mother defined nádleeh as "half woman, half man".[1]:169

^Medicine, Beatrice (August 2002). "Directions in Gender Research in American Indian Societies: Two Spirits and Other Categories". Online Readings in Psychology and Culture. International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology. 3 (1): 7. doi:10.9707/2307-0919.1024. ISSN2307-0919. Archived from the original on 2012-12-08. Retrieved 2016-06-25. At the Wenner Gren conference on gender held in Chicago, May, 1994... the gay American Indian and Alaska Native males agreed to use the term "Two Spirit" to replace the controversial "berdache" term. The stated objective was to purge the older term from anthropological literature as it was seen as demeaning and not reflective of Native categories. Unfortunately, the term "berdache" has also been incorporated in the psychology and women studies domains, so the task for the affected group to purge the term looms large and may be formidable.

^ abc"Two Spirit 101" at NativeOut: "The Two Spirit term was adopted in 1990 at an Indigenous lesbian and gay international gathering to encourage the replacement of the term berdache, which means, 'passive partner in sodomy, boy prostitute.'" Accessed 23 Sep 2015

^ abPember, Mary Annette (Oct 13, 2016). "'Two Spirit' Tradition Far From Ubiquitous Among Tribes". Rewire. Retrieved Oct 17, 2016. Non-Native anthropologist Will Roscoe gets much of the public credit for coining the term two spirit. However, according to Kristopher Kohl Miner of the Ho-Chunk Nation, Native people such as anthropologist Dr. Wesley Thomas of the Dine or Navajo tribe also contributed to its creation. (Thomas is a professor in the School of Dine and Law Studies.)

^Pember, Mary Annette (Oct 13, 2016). "'Two Spirit' Tradition Far From Ubiquitous Among Tribes". Rewire. Retrieved Oct 17, 2016. Unfortunately, depending on an oral tradition to impart our ways to future generations opened the floodgates for early non-Native explorers, missionaries, and anthropologists to write books describing Native peoples and therefore bolstering their own role as experts. These writings were and still are entrenched in the perspective of the authors who were and are mostly white men.